Photo takenon 24 June,2009 showsthe solarreceiver ofthe world’sfirst hybrid
solar thermalgas turbinepower stationat KibbutzSamar insouthernIsrael.
XINHUA
KIBBUTZ SAMAR, 25 June — AORA,
A leading Israeli solar energy technology company,launched Wednesday world’s first hybrid
solar thermal power station at KibbutzSamar in southern Israel.
This marked the first time that concentratingsolar power (CSP) stations can provide
environmentally-friendly power 24hours a day, according to AORA’s CEO,
Haim Fried. AORA’s “Power Flower” station, named due to its unique yellow tulip design, consists of a field of 30 tracking mirrors (heliostats) situated on half an acre of land.
Each of the station’s 30 heliostats tracks the sun and reflects its rays towards the top
of a 30 meter-high tower housing a special solar receiver along with a 100 kilowatt gas
turbine. The patented receiver uses the solar energy to heat air to a temperature of 1,000
degrees Celsius and directs this energy into the turbine, which converts the thermal energy
into electric power that will be fed directly into the national grid.
Xinhua
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Israel launches world’s first hybrid solar power station
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Trial-YANGON, 26 June
YANGON, 26 June—Judges sat for Criminal Cases Nos 47/2009, 48/
2009, and 49/2009 filed against US citizen Mr John William Yettaw, Daw Aung
San Suu Kyi, Daw Khin Khin Win and Ma Win Ma Ma at Yangon North District
Court this morning.
In the process, Supreme Court (Yangon), in relation to its Criminal
Revision Case No 333 (B)/2009, summoned Criminal Case No 47/2009 of
Yangon North District Court. So, Yangon North District Court was in no position
to continue Criminal Case No 47/2009.
Therefore, Yangon North District Court, in order to question defence
witness Daw Khin Moe Moe, put off Criminal Case No 47/2009 to 3 July
together with Criminal Cases Nos 48/2009 and 49/2009.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson, the 'King of Pop,' dies at age 50
အသားအေရာင္နဲ ့လူမ်ိဳးခဲြျခားမႈကို သူ ့နည္းသူ ့ဟန္နဲ ့အသက္ဆုံးတိုင္ တိုက္ပဲြဝင္သြားတဲ့ ေပါ့ဘုရင္ကိုဦးညႊတ္ဂုဏ္ျပဳပါတယ္။
I solute you and god bless you.
ုဘုန္းလိႈင္-FWUBC
Autopsy set after Michael Jackson's sudden death
Remembering the 'King of Pop'
Slideshow:Michael Jackson dies at 50 Play Video Video:Jermaine Jackson: Want privacy in 'tough time' AP Play Video Video:Sights and Sounds: Remembering the 'King of Pop' AP AP – FILE - In this Aug. 29, 1993 file photo, pop singer Michael Jackson performs during his 'Dangerous' concert … By LYNN ELBER, Associated Press Writer Lynn Elber, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 7 mins ago
LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson, defined in equal parts as the world's greatest entertainer and perhaps its most enigmatic figure, was about to attempt one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Then his life was cut shockingly — and so far, mysteriously — short.
The 50-year-old musical superstar died Thursday, just as he was preparing for what would be a series of 50 concerts starting July 13 at London's famed 02 arena. Jackson had been spending hours and hours toiling with a team of dancers for a performance he and his fans hoped would restore his tarnished legacy to its proper place in pop.
An autopsy was planned for Friday, though results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, a process that could take several days and sometimes weeks. However, if a cause can be determined by the autopsy, they will announce the results, said Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator Jerry McKibben.
Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.
"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said.
Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
His 1982 album "Thriller" — which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.
As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson's heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York's Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.
"No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow," Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."
The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "I'll Be There."
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson's sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible," Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. "I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."
As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him "Wacko Jacko."
"It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It's as if he was trying to defy gravity," said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a "disciple of P.T. Barnum" and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was "much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew."
Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.
The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.
The album "Thriller" alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of "Billie Jean," the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on "Beat It," and the hiccups and falsettos on "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."
The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through "Billie Jean."
The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.
During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson's scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.
He had strong follow-up albums with 1987's "Bad" and 1991's "Dangerous," but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy's family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.
Jackson's expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album "HIStory," which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson's music was clearly waning even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.
Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II. Now 7, Jackson said the boy nicknamed Blanket as a baby was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson's star power was unmatched. "The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it," Werde said. "He's literally the king of pop."
Jackson's 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.
"He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit," he said. "People might have started to think of him again in a different light."
__
AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch and AP writers Derrik J. Lang, Solvej Schou, Anthony McCartney and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles; and Virginia Byrne, Hillel Italie, Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.
KNU Headquarters Overrun: Now What?
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16188
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By SAW YAN NAING Thursday, June 25, 2009
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After a long offensive, the Burmese army and its ceasefire militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), has overrun the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 7 headquarters.
The question now is: What’s next?
Karen sources and analysts said the fighting will continue as the joint Burmese army and DKBA troops focus their attacks toward the KNLA Brigade 6 area.
Analysts said powerful business interests are supporting the offensive.
Enlarge Image
(Graphic:
The Irrawaddy)
The Burmese regime’s goal is to control all of central Karen State, where the Karen National Union’s KNLA Brigade 7 and 6 are now located, in order to dominate the business and border trade activity with Thailand, said one DKBA businessman who asked for anonymity.
Once dominated, many industries, companies and infrastructure will be improved and supported by the Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said the businessman.
Important activities will include logging and mining natural resources, including zinc, he said.
He said the Burmese authorities and DKBA troops will construct roads to connect between army headquarters in Myaing Gyi Ngu and border areas.
Once the clashes end, the relationship between the DKBA and local Thai authorities and businessmen in Mae Sot will expand when compared to the past, businessmen said.
During the recent fighting, a KNU leader said two DKBA leaders were spotted in a car traveling with Thai police near the border where Karen refugees have sought shelter in Tha Song Yang District in Tak Province.
Analysts also said the situation will be more dangerous for the KNU and Burmese opposition groups in exile when the border area is controlled by DKBA troops.
Maj Hla Ngwe, the joint secretary (1) of the KNU, said the loss of KNLA Brigade 7 headquarters could affect the work of Burmese opposition organizations based in Mae Sot.
“The opposition movement will be limited. They might not launch campaigns as they did before,” said Hla Ngwe.
Border sources also say more assassinations could be expected in the border area, where many Burmese and ethnic opposition groups are based.
In February 2008, the KNU’s late general secretary, Mahn Sha, was gun down by two DKBA members at his home near the center of Mae Sot. Many sources claimed the assassination also involved Thai border police.
Border sources said that DKBA members will have easy access to Mae Sot once the relationship between the DKBA and Thai border authorities is established.
A sign of the evolving transition in the power center, said the businessman, is that DKBA soldiers are now receiving medical care in Mae Sot. What’s happening is “very obvious,” he said.
The DKBA plans to expand its troops from 6,000 to 9,000 in preparation for its transformation to become a border guard force under the Burmese army. The DKBA split from it mother organization, the KNU, and signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese regime in 1995.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Sunday, June 21, 2009
JAMよりスタディーツアーのご案内JAM 2nd meeting briefing schedule and Study Tours
ホーム メータオ・クリニックとメータオ・クリニック支援の会 活動・レポート・PR情報 ご支援いただける方々へ お問い合わせ FAQ リンク Reporting activities to support the clinic and clinic METAO METAO Home PR people you support and information contact us FAQ links
You are here: ホーム You are here: Home
おしらせ News
第2回JAMスタディツアー日程および事前説明説明会 JAM 2nd meeting briefing schedule and Study Tours
日時 ：09年7月18日（土）～7月23日（木） 5泊6日 Date: 1909 July 18 (Sat.) - Thursday, July 23 5 nights 6 days
参加費：99,800円 Fee: 99,800 yen
定員 ：10名 Capacity: 10 persons
〆切 ：6月27日（土） Deadline: Saturday, June 27
日程・内容 Content Schedule
詳細およびお申し込みは以下をご参照ください。 For more information and application please see below.
第2回JAMスタディツアー参加者募集要項 Second Call for Participants JAM Study Tours
第2回JAMスタディツアー事前説明会要項 JAM 2nd Study Tour Pre-Application Meeting
スタディツアー参加申込書 The Study Tour Registration
保護者同意書 Written parental consent
特徴1. 10万円でおつりが来る安さ！ Features 1.10 yen for something cheap! でご提案します。 Offers.
10万円以下（99,800円）タイへのNGOツアーとしては、最安値です。 10 million yen (99,800 yen) to Thailand as a tour NGO is low. （JAM調べ） 学生の皆さんにも参加しやすい価格に挑戦しました！ (JAM police) tried to price and easy to join the students!
特徴2. 一粒で何度もおいしい！ Features 2. With a grain of good times! 多様性に触れるツアーのご提案です。 Tour is offering a touch of diversity.
今回の訪問地メソト（Mae Sot）では、国境地帯の性格上、タイ文化にもミャンマーの文化にも触れられます。 Visit the Mae Sot (Mae Sot), the nature of the border, you are exposed to a culture of Myanmar and Thai culture. また、キリスト教、仏教、イスラム教などの宗教施設もある、多様性に富んだ街です。 Also, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and other religious facilities, a city rich in diversity.
また、あのノーベル平和賞候補者、ドクター・シンシアとの座談会も緊急決定！ The Nobel Peace Prize candidate, so I decided the urgent discussion with Dr. Cynthia!
※過去のスタディーツアーに関しては活動・レポートよりご覧いただけます。 ※ Study Tour in the past about our activities from the report.
更新情報 Updates
2009/06/16 2008年度、JAM総会での発表資料および活動報告掲載(資料追加) 2009/06/16 fiscal 2008, JAM on the report and presentation to the annual meeting (additional materials)
2009/06/16 前川看護師沖縄公演「国際協力に関心を」、資料掲載 2009/06/16 concert master Okinawa Nursing MAEKAWA "an interest in international cooperation", on the article
2009/06/08 新たにメータオクリニックへ医師を派遣（現地ブログ開設） 2009/06/08 METAOKURINIKKU dispatching doctors to the new (opened in blog)
2009/05/27 過去の会報を掲載 2009/05/27 newsletter published in the past
セミナー・講演情報 Conference Information Seminar
JAMメンバーによる講演の予定です。 Presentation by members of the JAM will.
2009/06/25 OurPlanet-TVのラジオ番組「東京ラブレター」 2009/06/25 OurPlanet-TV radio, "Tokyo Love Letter"
2009/09/06 日本ビルマ救援センター（大阪） 2009/09/06 Burmese Relief Center-Japan (Osaka)
2009/06/14 学びフォーラム（京都） 横川 裕美子先生（京都橘大学看護学部）が、滋賀・京都地区の高校生を対象にした「学びフォーラム」でJAMの活動を紹介してくださいました。 2009/06/14 Learning Forum (Kyoto) Dr. Yokogawa Yumiko (Kyoto Tachibana University Faculty of Nursing), a district high school students in Kyoto, Shiga "learning forum" to introduce Mr. JAM activities. 横川先生、ありがとうございました！ Yokogawa teacher, thank you!
2009/04/16 鎌倉大船ロータリークラブ Rotary Club Oohune Kamakura 2009/04/16
2009/03/08 第24回日本国際保健医療学会東日本地方会 2009/03/08 The 24th East Regional Meeting of Japan Society for International Health
2008/10/07 ピースロード鎌倉 Kamakura 2008/10/07 piece Rhodes
2008/08/22 アジア保健教育機構 Health Education Organization Asia 2008/08/22
講演のご要望・過去の講演資料請求などございましたら、 お問い合わせページよりご連絡ください。 Request Information Feel free speech and the speech of the last request, please contact us from contact page.
新型インフルエンザ緊急レポート Pandemic flu emergency report
新型インフルエンザ確認に伴い、JAMでも対応を開始しております。 With the new flu, JAM has started to respond. 随時レポートしてまいりますので、日々のサイトのご確認をお願いいたします。 We have reports from time to time, we thank you for your site.
レポート第一弾 （20090501) Series of reports (20090501)
©2009 NGO メータオ・クリニック支援の会 © 2009 NGO Committee in support METAO Clinic
当サイトへのリンクの際には、必ず事前にご連絡をお願いいたします。 The link to this site, thank you to us in advance.
ご意見・お問い合わせは「お問い合わせ」よりお願いいたします。 Contact us in "contact us" thank you.
当会は、特定の政治・宗教とは一切関係ありません。当会, religion and politics is not related to any particular.
Original Japanese text:
第2回JAMスタディツアー参加者募集要項
Contribute a better translation
JAMよりスタディーツアーのご案内(7月）Sunday, 21 June, 2009 20:17
From: "ml@japanmaetao.org"
ＪＡＭよりスタディーツアーのご案内 (20090621)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ご支援いただき誠にありがとうございます。
ＪＡＭスタディツアー参加者募集のお知らせです。
「国境の町で、文化や宗教の多様性に触れる旅」
■ 日 時：2009年7月18日（土）～7月23日（木） 5泊6日
■ 参加費： 合計 99,800円
■ 対 象：JAM 賛助会員
■ 定 員：15名
■ 申込方法：JAMのホームページTOPにリンクされております参加申込書に
必要事項をご記入いただき、support@japanmaetao.org へ添付してください。
■ 申込締切：2009年6月27日（土）※ 夏期繁忙期間のため、
※航空券の残りが少なくなっているため、参加希望の方は早めのお申込を
お願いいたします。
■ 事前説明会について 本ツアー参加者を対象に、7月4日（土）に
事前説明会を予定しています。
※詳細はHPをご覧下さい。
■ 申込・問い合わせ先： support@japanmaetao.org （担当 岡谷）
■以前開催したスタディツアーの内容がJAMのホームページに掲載されています。
「活動・レポート」→「スタディツアー体験レポート」とお進みになり、ご覧ください。
ご質問等ございましたら、support@japanmaetao.org までお願いいたします。
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発行：メータオ・クリニック支援の会
WEBサイト：http://www.japanmaetao.org/
MAIL：support@japanmaetao.org
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本メールの無断転載を禁止します。
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Female senators back Suu Kyi-USA
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking+News/SE+Asia/Story/STIStory_392955.html
June 20, 2009
WASHINGTON - THE 17 women serving in the US Senate made a joint appeal on Friday for the release of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she spent her 64th birthday in prison.
The 17 of the 50 US senators who are female issued a joint statement voicing solidarity with the Nobel Peace laureate.
'The military junta has tried for years to stifle the will of the people and silence the voice of Suu Kyi through a brutal campaign of violence and oppression,' they said.
'Yet Aung San Suu Kyi remains a beacon of hope for a future of democracy, the rule of law and human rights,' they said.
The Women's Caucus of the US Senate is headed by Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat representing California, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas.
Activists around the world rallied on Friday for the release of Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.
The democracy icon is now on trial at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her home. -- AFP
In Myanmar, Two Hidden Worlds Amid privations, its regime prospers by trading with China and India
Saturday, June 20, 2009
By WALL SREET JOURNAL REPORTERS
This grandiose new city has four-lane highways that are largely empty, a gems museum with sapphires and a zoo with air-conditioned Arctic habitats for penguins. Government officials reside in high-security compounds that can’t be visited by foreigners.
A five-hour drive to the south, residents in Yangon get by with hours at a time of no electricity. Their once-grand city is filled with collapsing Victorian mansions and abandoned colonial administrative buildings. Roads are often impassable during monsoon rains, and most cars date to the 1980s or early 1990s. Some taxis are so worn out that they have holes in the floorboards that allow passengers to see the road rushing by underneath.
The divide between Myanmar’s shining new capital, home to much of its military elite, and its commercial capital underscores the failure of a decade of U.S. and European sanctions, efforts to break the country’s military regime by cutting it off from doing business with much of the Western world. Instead, the country’s leaders and top businessmen have survived and even thrived by replacing Western buyers with Asian ones. Trade with China has more than doubled over the past five years, and sales of natural gas and other resources to Thailand, India and other Asian powers are also growing quickly. In the process, the regime has only tightened its grip.
All that is leading dissidents, human rights advocates and congressional leaders to an increasingly widespread conclusion: It’s time for a new approach. Many believe it will require a far greater effort by Western governments to engage directly with the secretive regime. It will also require exerting more pressure on Asian trading partners, including China and Singapore, to pressure the junta to curb human rights abuses and make other changes. Many advocates are calling for more radical approaches, including offering to dismantle some of the sanctions —albeit with threats of more serious actions, such as arms embargoes or criminal tribunals like ones in Rwanda or Sudan, if the regime doesn’t reform.
Others go so far as to propose that the West should accept a diminished role for Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leading opposition figure. The Nobel laureate is arguably the world’s most revered prisoner of conscience since Nelson Mandela, but she has drawn criticism for her inflexibility in dealing with the regime. It’s unclear when, or if, she’ll be able to lead the opposition again. The 64-year-old is on trial for letting an American well-wisher visit her home this May in violation of a longstanding house arrest, and faces up to five more years in jail.
In February, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that past strategies including sanctions weren’t working, and promised the U.S. would conduct a thorough review—still incomplete—of its policies towards Myanmar. Top officials in the Obama administration are also hoping to significantly increase humanitarian aid, according to people familiar with the matter, which many Myanmar experts hope will be a step towards rebuilding a civil society that could mature into a new opposition movement to supplement or replace Ms. Suu Kyi.
Once dismissed as a backwater, Myanmar has seen its profile rise dramatically in recent years because of its position between China and India, the world’s two biggest emerging superpowers. Both are jockeying for Myanmar’s natural gas, copper and other resources, and Myanmar offers China a potential alternate overland route for oil and gas, bypassing the crowded Strait of Malacca near Singapore that handles much of East Asia’s supply today.
Trade with China jumped to more than $2.6 billion in 2008 from about $630 million in 2001, according to Chinese government data. Analysts say the official numbers vastly understate the full extent of China’s investments in Myanmar. In downtown Yangon, its commercial capital, trucks laden with massive logs or other goods—sometimes with Chinese characters painted on the side of the vehicles—are a common sight.
Monywa, once a relatively minor village in central Myanmar, has emerged as a major trading center for beans and other legumes, commodities in heavy demand across Asia, especially India. Myanmar is now the world’s second biggest exporter of the crops after Canada, and Monywa has reaped the rewards. It has quadrupled in size to 400,000 people over the past two decades. The number of traders has grown to roughly 1,000 from 200 in the 1990s and multistory homes with Greek columns are commonplace, as are imported SUVs, which can cost $100,000 in Myanmar.
In places like Monywa, “it’s easy to make money,” says one local trader in his 20s.
Some analysts and U.S. congressional leaders fear Myanmar could become a nuclear threat. Russia has acknowledged signing an agreement with Myanmar in 2007 to help build a nuclear reactor and a center for nuclear research there, reportedly for medical research purposes, but Russian officials have said no concrete projects ever materialized. Others point to growing ties between Myanmar and North Korea.
Any new diplomatic initiative from the U.S. would require finding a way to deal with one of the world’s most reclusive regimes. Top officials—including the country’s senior-most general, a psychological warfare expert in his 70s named Than Shwe—are ensconced in Naypyitaw. Members of the inner circle rarely meet with Western ambassadors, who remain in Yangon.
Attempts to reach the regime for this article were unsuccessful. The generals typically make their views known through state-run newspapers. In recent weeks they have blasted foreign countries for interfering in Myanmar’s internal affairs and defended the imprisonment of Ms. Suu Kyi as necessary for public security.
The government usually prohibits foreign journalists from entering. Authorized guests, including aid workers, often must get permission to travel outside Yangon. Residents can be imprisoned if caught aiding international journalists.
In the 1800s, British soldiers conquered what used to be known as Burma. It became the world’s biggest rice exporter and a major source of timber. In the late 1940s, nationalists led by Ms. Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San, secured independence. Aung San was assassinated and in 1962 the military took over for good, implementing a series of disastrous socialist policies that sent the economy into a tailspin.
Anger boiled over in 1988 student protests, in which more than 3,000 were killed, and the government agreed to hold national elections. When Ms. Suu Kyi’s party won, the military ignored the result.
The U.S. banned new American investments in Myanmar in 1997, and in 2003 it outlawed imports of Myanmar goods and restricted American banks from doing business there. The Bush administration added additional targeted sanctions against members of the regime.
The practical effect of the sanctions, though, has been to push the regime deeper into the arms of China and other Asian powers, while leaving much of the rest of society to suffer the consequences. Per capita gross domestic product is about $1,200, only slightly higher than Rwanda, and far below Singapore’s $52,000 and $47,000 in the U.S.
In Yangon, U.S. trade restrictions ripped apart the garment industry earlier this decade, throwing as many as 80,000 young women out of work, according to economists. Trucks filled with soldiers are seen often, as are signs with pro-government messages such as one that exhorts residents to “Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.”
In Yangon’s central business district there are offices or billboards for many of Asia’s biggest brand names, including Mitsubishi and Canon, but almost no sign of Western companies. Thai oil and gas producer PTT Exploration & Production PCL has Myanmar investments that provide about one-third of Thailand’s natural gas needs, worth $2 billion or more in recent years. Cnooc Ltd. is exploring for oil and a number of Chinese resources and engineering firms are involved in hydropower and mining ventures.
Much of the money flows directly to the regime and its allies. According to the U.S. government, the military owns a majority stake in virtually all enterprises responsible for extracting natural resources. The government is now sitting on more than $3 billion in foreign exchange reserves, compared to just $30 million in 1988. Wealthier residents, including businessmen linked by U.S. intelligence reports to the military, have access to art galleries, pricey French restaurants and shopping trips to Singapore.
Adding to the frustration is evidence that Ms. Suu Kyi’s opposition is in tatters. Leaders of Ms. Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, are in their 70s and 80s, and the junta has imprisoned most of the younger blood, exiles and human rights groups say, with more than 2,000 political prisoners now under lock and key. The government has also pressured monasteries to purge monks involved in 2007 street protests, and it routinely blocks blogs and Web sites, such as youtube, that it deems to be subversive.
“Almost no one is willing to join the (opposition) party for fear of being arrested,” said one resident. Party leaders meet regularly at their headquarters, a modest house surrounded by shops on a busy street in central Yangon; it’s widely assumed the building and its occupants are monitored by the government.
Another resident said she started attending meetings at NLD headquarters when Ms. Suu Kyi’s trial began, but stopped because she felt they were going nowhere. “They were old, they were like aunties and uncles,” said the young woman, who thought the meetings felt “like a reunion” for old dissidents. Without Ms. Suu Kyi, “there is no one,” she said.
Even some dissidents who support sanctions say additional tactics are needed, including more direct engagement with the regime. Others believe the sanctions would be more effective if fine-tuned to focus only on the junta members themselves, or backed up with more potent punishments, including arms embargoes or criminal tribunals.
More than 50 U.S. congressmen signed a letter in recent weeks calling for a U.N. Security Council inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity in Myanmar, similar to what occurred in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan. The United Nations’ former special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, has issued similar calls in the past six weeks, as has a team of leading jurists in conjunction with Harvard Law School.
Those efforts may well be blocked at the U.N. by nations that have defended Myanmar in the past, notably China and Russia. But backers say the U.S. hasn’t been willing to press hard enough to get Asian nations to get tough on Myanmar.
Another option gaining popularity in Washington: significantly boosting humanitarian aid, partly to build stronger groups to counter the military.
One group is Myanmar Egress, a local think tank set up in 2006 by young intellectuals with the goal of trying to end the stalemate between the government and Ms. Suu Kyi’s backers. Egress has produced studies for the government outlining its vision for reform. In one, co-founder and former Yale student Nay Win Maung suggested that Ms. Suu Kyi propose to contest only 50% of the seats in an election planned by the regime in 2010. In return for effectively conceding the vote, the government would end her house arrest and release political prisoners.
Mr. Maung’s approach has angered some Myanmar exiles, who are suspicious of engaging with the state and distrust Mr. Maung, whose parents were in the military and taught at Myanmar’s version of West Point. His approach, though, has made him a useful mediator between foreign aid groups like Oxfam and the generals, local aid workers say. The U.K.’s Department for International Development, for example, is funding an Egress project to train Myanmar citizens in managing aid projects.
The junta could block or limit aid if it suspects it’s being used to undermine the regime, as it did temporarily last year after Cyclone Nargis, which killed 135,000 people or more. Currently, development aid to Myanmar totals less than $3 per person, compared with about $50 in Sudan.
Whatever happens, “if people want to punish the regime, they need to find ways to do it that don’t punish the people,” says Andrew Kirkwood, Myanmar country director for Save the Children, the aid organization.
Mr. Pinheiro, the former U.N. special rapporteur, who is pressing for an inquiry into human rights violations, says, with a new administration in Washington and interest rising in Myanmar, “I think there is a space here to have something new, something more flexible” that ultimately will bring some results.
Jeg's Comment on PHOTOS: What you are to view is what the military does not want the west to see as according to Than Shwe regime the dictatorship has made many improvements to the country... can you pick any improvements in your sights? if you do please share.
Burmese army drives ethnic rebels from last stronghold
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burmese-army-drives-ethnic-rebels-from-last-stronghold-1708992.html
Thousands of refugees flee to Thailand as Karen fighters resort to guerrilla war
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
Friday, 19 June 2009
An ethnic rebel army that has been fighting for greater autonomy from Burma for more than 60 years has been driven from its stronghold after weeks of fighting against government troops, raising the prospect of a fresh flood of refugees into Thailand.
More than 4,000 civilians have fled into neighbouring Thailand this month following attacks by Burmese troops against the Karen National Union (KNU). Yesterday, the rebels revealed that having given up several camps, they had now been forced from their main base.
"Our troops are planning to move behind enemy lines to pursue guerrilla warfare," the KNU's vice-president, David Tharckabaw, told the Associated Press. "If it is necessary, any camp can be abandoned."
The struggle by the Karen, squeezed into ever smaller patches of jungle in the east of Burma, represents an ultimately futile battle against the odds. It is one of the world's longest-running conflicts.
With almost all other ethnic rebel groups having now agreed peace deals with the Burmese junta, the KNU has been struggling to survive against a determined effort by the government to crush the last of the rebels.
About 100,000 Karen refugees have taken shelter in Thai camps over the past two decades after fleeing the government's counter-insurgency operations. Aid groups suggest that another half-million Karen are displaced inside eastern Burma.
Human rights groups and the UN have long accused the Burmese government of torturing, killing and raping Karen civilians while trying to stamp out the insurgency, though the military regime denies the allegations.
Last week, the EU condemned the fighting, saying that it "noted with serious concern the mounting offensive of the Burmese army and its allies against the Karen... which has resulted in large numbers of civilians fleeing from the conflict area.
"The EU calls for an immediate ceasefire and requests the authorities and military operators to ensure the protection of civilians at all times."
During the Second World War, British forces recruited ethnic Karen to help drive the Japanese from Burma, with an undertaking that at the conclusion of the war, they would win their independence.
With victory secured, however, that pledge was forgotten and independent Burma's first leader, General Aung San, the father of the imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was also opposed to Karen autonomy.
The stepping up of the junta's operation against the Karen, who are seeking a federal state rather than independence, comes as preparations are made to mark Aung San Suu Kyi's 64th birthday today.
The opposition leader is to spend her birthday at the notorious Insein jail in Rangoon, where she is being held after an American man swam to her house, uninvited. She has been accused of violating the conditions of her house arrest after she let the man stay at her home for two nights.
Ms Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention since the junta refused to recognise the victory of her party, the National League for Democracy, in a 1990 election.
In Rangoon, members of her party were planning a celebration at their headquarters where they intended to give breakfast to Buddhist monks. "We have to hold the birthday party without the host again. We would be very happy if she could be released, we are hoping and praying for this," said a senior party member, Lei Lei.
A website set up to gather birthday wishes for Aung San Suu Kyi, "64 for Suu," has collected more than 10,000 names, including those of Gordon Brown, David Beckham, George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Undercover report from inside Burma-19-JUNE-2009
Protests and vigils are being held around the world on to mark the birthday of the detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
In Burma her supporters say they want to protest but face severe punishment and even threats of death from the army.
Foreign reporters are not allowed inside Burma - but the BBC's Nick Springate travelled there and compiled this report.
Friday, June 19, 2009
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္(၆၄)ေျမာက္ေမြးေန ့အထိန္းအမွတ္ စာစု
၁၈-၀၆-၂၀၀၉
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္(၆၄)ေျမာက္ေမြးေန ့အထိန္းအမွတ္ စာစု
အရင္ဆုံးသတင္းေပးခ်င္တာက ဂီရင္းလို ့ေခၚတဲ့ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေရးကို
ေထာက္ခံအားေပးေနတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္လႊတ္ေတာ္အမတ္မ်ားအဖဲြ ့က ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကို
Democracy and Peace Award ဆုကို နက္ျဖန္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ေမြးေန ့မွာခ်ီး
ျမင့္မွာျဖစ္ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ရဲ့ကိုယ္စား အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္ဒုတိယ
ဥကၠဌ ဦးတင္ဦးရဲ့ သားလဲျဖစ္ အမ်ိဳးုသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္လြတ္ေျမာက္နယ္ေျမ
ဂ်ပန္ရဲ့ ဥကၠဌလည္းျဖစ္တဲ့ ကိုသန္ ့စင္ဦးကလက္ခံရယူမွာျဖစ္ေႀကာင္းသတင္းပါးလို
ပါတယ္။
ေနာက္တခုက ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္အသက္(၆၄) နွစ္ျပည့္အထိန္းအမွတ္ ဆန္လႉပဲြ
ကိုလဲ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားစုေပါင္းျပီး ထိုင္ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ မဲေဆာက္ဧရိယာ
မွာျပဳလုပ္ေနပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာက်ပ္ေငြသိန္း(၁၁၀) ဖိုးေလာက္အလႉခံရရိွပါတယ္။
အမ်ွေပးေဝပါတယ္။
သာဓုေခၚႀကပါခင္ဗ်ား
အခုက်ႊန္ေတာ္တင္ျပခ်င္တာက - တရားကိုျမင္မွ ဘုရားကိုျမင္မယ္
ဆိုတဲ့ဆိုရိုးစကားဗုဒၶဘာသာမွာရိွပါတယ္။ အခုလဲေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကညရဲ့နိုင္ငံ
ေရးအျမင္ကိုသိမွ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကိုသိမွာျဖစ္လို ့ ၈၈- အေရးအခင္း
ေနာက္ပိုင္း လူငယ္မ်ိဳးဆက္သစ္ေတြကို ရည္ရြယ္ျပီး ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ရဲ့
အေတြးအေခၚေတြထဲက စာပိုဒ္(၃) ပိုဒ္ကို ေခါင္းစဥ္ခဲြျပီးမွတ္မွတ္ရရတင္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာလူထုနဲ ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ
ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံမ်ားမွ နိုင္ငံသူနိုင္ငံသားမ်ားရရိွေသာ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ားခံစားပိုင္ခြင့္မ်ားကို
ျမန္မာျပည္သားတို ့မခံစားထိုက္ဟူေသာ စကားသည္ ေစာ္ကားရာေရာက္ပါသည္။
တခ်ိန္တည္းတြင္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအစိုးရကမူ ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံအစိုးရမ်ားထက္ ပိုမို၍ အခြင့္အေရးမ်ား
ခံစားပိုင္ခြင့္ရိွသည္ဟု ယူဆထားျခင္းမွာ ယုတၱိတန္ပါသလားဟု ေမးစရာျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ဥပေဒ
ဥပေဒဟူသည္ တရားမွ်တမႈနွင့္ ထပ္တူထပ္မွ်ျဖစ္ျပီး တရားမွ်တမႈရိွျခင္းေႀကာင့္ ျပည္သူ
ျပည္သားမ်ား ေႀကေႀကနပ္နပ္နွင့္ ျငိမ္သက္ေနႀကေသာ ျငိမ္ဝပ္ပိျပားမႈမ်ိဳးသာလွ်င္ မြန္ျမတ္ပါသည္။
ဥပေဒကို အစိုးရ၏ ဖိနိွပ္ခ်ဳပ္ခ်ယ္ေသာကရိယာအျဖစ္ အသုံးျပဳျခင္းသည္ အာဏာ
ရွင္စနစ္၏ အမ်ားသိႀကန္အင္လကၡဏာတရပ္ပင္ျဖစ္သည္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြ
သစ္ပင္၏အရိပ္သည္ေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ မိဘ၏အရိပ္သည္ပိုေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ ဆရာသမား၏အရိပ္သည္ပိုမိုေအးျမ၏
ထို ့ထက္ မင္း ၏အရိပ္သည္ ပိုမို၍ေအးျမ၏
သို ့ေသာ္ အေအးျမဆုံးမွာ ဗုဒၶရွင္ေတာ္ျမတ္၏ အရိပ္ျဖစ္၏
ထို ့ေႀကာင့္ ျပည္သူလူထုကို ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနွင့္ လုံျခံဳေရးဟူသည့္
ေအးျမေသာအရိပ္အာဝါသေပးနိုင္ရန္အတြက္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူတို ့သည္ ဗုဒၶ၏အဆုံးအမ
ႀသဝါဒမ်ားကို လိုက္နာရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ ယင္းႀသဝါဒမ်ားထဲတြင္ သစၥာရိွျခင္း ၊
ဂရုဏာထားျခင္း နွင့္ တရားဓမၼေစာင့္စည္းျခင္း တို ့သည္အဓိကျဖစ္သည္။
ဤသို ့ေသာအရည္အခ်င္းမ်ားေပၚတြင္ အေျချပဳေသာ အစိုးရကိုရရန္ရည္ရြယ္၍
ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားတို ့က ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြဝင္ေနႀကျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။
အထက္ပါ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြေအာင္ျမင္ဖို ့ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္တေယာက္အေနနဲ ့
ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ရဲ့အျမင္ကိုတင္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။
ဒီမိုကေရစီတိုက္ပဲြေအာင္ျမင္ဖို ့
၁။ကိုယ့္အားကိုယ္ကိုးရမယ္(ကယ္တင္ရွင္ေတြကိုေစာင့္မေနႀကပါနဲ ့ ဗုဒၶ ကေဟာထားတယ္ ကိုယ့္အား
ကိုယ္ကိုးပါတဲ့-ဟုတ္ပါတယ္ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကိုကိုယ္ ကိုယ့္နိုင္ငံကိုကိုယ္ကယ္တင္ႀကရမွာပါ။ ဘယ္သူ ့ကိုမွ
ဘယ္နိုင္ငံကိုမွ လာကယ္တင္လိမ့္မယ္ဆိုျပီးေမွ်ာ္ေနလို ့မရပါဘူး ဘယ္နိုင္ငံမဆို ကိုယ့္အက်ိဳးစီးပြား
အတြက္အရင္ႀကည့္ျပီးမွလုပ္ႀကတာပါ
၂။စည္းလုံးညီညြတ္ရမယ္(ဦးတည္ခ်က္ကို့အဓိကထားျပီးတေယာက္နဲ ့တေယာက္သေဘာထားႀကီးျပီး
စိတ္ရွည္သည္းခံဖို ့လိုပါတယ္၊ တေယာက္အားနွင့္ယူေသာ္မရ အမ်ားအားနွင့္ယူေသာ္ရ၏တဲ့။)
ျပီးေတာ့ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားေပၚမွာအေျခခံတဲ့
(က) ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဆႏၵ
(ခ) ျပင္းျပတဲ့ဝီရိယ
(ဂ) စဲြျမဲတဲ့စိတ္ဓါတ္(
ဃ)စူးစမ္းေလ့လာမႈ တို ့ရိွရပါမယ္။
(ကိုယ့္က်င့္တရားမေကာင္းတဲ့လူေတြမ်ားေနရင္ဒီမိုကေရစီနိုင္ငံထူေထာင္လဲနိုင္ငံေကာင္းလာမွာမဟုတ္
ပါဘူး ျပီးေတာ့ ဗုဒၶကေဟာထားပါတယ္ တရားကိုေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေသာသူကို တရားကျပန္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္၏တဲ့
စစ္အာဏာရွင္ေတြ ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားပ်က္ျပားတာကေတာ့ေျပာစရာကိုမလိုေတာ့ပါဘူး ျပည္သူေတြေရာ
ဘယ္ေလာက္ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားေစာင့္ႀကသလဲဆိုတာကိုယ့္ဘာသာကိုယ္ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ဖို ့လိုပါတယ္။
အဲ့ဒီမွာေျပာခ်င္တာက ၆၂ ခုနွစ္စစ္တပ္ကအာဏာသိမ္းျပီး ဗိုလ္ေနဝင္းက အူမေတာင့္မွသီလေစာင့္
နိင္မယ္ ဆိုတဲ့စကားနဲ ့ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားအမ်ားစုကို ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားပ်က္ေအာင္လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္ အခု
ဗုဒၶရဲ့အဆုံးအမအရ ဘယ္သူတရားပ်က္ပ်က္ကိုယ္မပ်က္နဲ ့ဆိုတဲ့ အဆုံးအမအတိုင္း ကၽြန္ေတာ္
တို ့တေတြ ကိုယ့္ရဲ့ကိုယ္က်င့္တရားကို ကိုယ့္ဘာသာထိန္းျပီး ျပဳျပင္ဖို ့အခ်ိန္တန္ေနျပီ ေနာက္ေတာင္
က်ေနပါျပီ)
ေနာက္ဆုံးအေရးအႀကီးဆုံးအခ်က္ကေတာ့ သတိတရား ပါဘဲ
တခြန္းထဲနဲ ့မွန္ေသာစကားကိုေျပာေသာေႀကာင့္ ဗုဒၶ ဟုေခၚ၏(အဲ့ဒါ ဗုဒၶ ရဲ့ဂုဏ္ပုဒ္ေတြထဲကတခုပါ)
အဲ့ဒီ ဗုဒၶရွင္ေတာ္ျမတ္က သတိလက္မလြတ္နဲ ့လို ့အႀကိမ္ေပါင္းရာေက်ာ္ေျပာသြားပါတယ္ ခႏၶာဝန္
ခ်ခါနီးေနာက္ဆုံးအခ်ိန္မွာလဲေနာက္ဆုံးေဟာသြားတာက သတိမလြတ္ေစႀကနဲ ့ေဟ့လို ့မွာသြားရွာပါ
တယ္။ သတိတရားအေရးအႀကီးဆုံးပါ သတိတလုံးလြတ္ျပီဆိုရင္ အေပၚကေျပာထားတာေတြ ကိုယ္
က်င့္တရားေတြအကုန္ကုန္ပါျပီ။
ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံသားအားလုံးကိုယ္စိတ္နွစ္ျဖာက်န္းမာခ်မ္းသာႀကပါေစ။
ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုႀကည္ကိုယ္စိတ္နွစ္ျဖာက်န္းမာခ်မ္းသာပါေစ။
ေလးစားစြာျဖင့္-
(ဘုန္းလိႈင္)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
UN chief urges Myanmar to release Suu Kyi
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h43HOb8ShnMZ8ZmOo-tu8gTFawyQ
Jun 16, 2009
TOKYO (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Myanmar on Tuesday to free all political prisoners, including detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, days ahead of a visit to the military-ruled country.
Ban is due to arrive in Myanmar on Friday for rare talks with the military junta, but Aung San Suu Kyi's party says he must also meet her if he hopes to make real progress toward democratic reforms.
"They should release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi," said Ban, who was in Japan en route to Myanmar where the Nobel Peace laureate has been detained for 13 of the past 19 years.
"They (the junta) should immediately resume dialogue between the government and opposition leaders," he added after talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone.
His diplomatically risky two-day trip starts on the day a Myanmar court is due to resume its trial of the 64-year-old on charges of violating her house arrest after an American man swam to her lakeside home.
"We welcome Mr Ban Ki-moon's visit," Nyan Win, the spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) and a member of her legal team, told AFP.
He said the visit would focus on three issues: "to release all political prisoners, to start dialogue, and also to ensure free and fair elections in 2010.
"Regarding these three things, he needs to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi."
A UN statement said Ban looked forward to meeting "all key stakeholders," but did not specify whether he would meet the woman he described in May as an "indispensable patron for reconsidering the dialogue in Myanmar."
Aung San Suu Kyi is currently being held at Insein prison in Yangon where her internationally condemned trial is taking place alongside that of American John Yettaw. She faces up to five years in jail if convicted.
Her NLD won a landslide victory in Myanmar's last election in 1990, but it was never recognised by the military and she has spent most of the intervening years in detention.
Ban decided to go ahead with his mission after being briefed Sunday by his special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, who paid a short preparatory visit to the country last week.
Gambari met twice with Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win in the generals' remote administrative capital Naypyidaw before holding talks with Singapore's ambassador and UN staff in Yangon, but did not meet with Aung San Suu Kyi.
The UN statement said Ban would highlight a resumption of dialogue between the government and opposition as a necessary part of reconciliation.
He would also focus on "the need to create conditions conducive to credible elections," as well as on the release of political prisoners, it added.
The junta has vowed to hold elections in 2010, but critics say they are a sham designed to entrench its hold on power and that Aung San Suu Kyi's trial is intended to keep her behind bars during the polls.
Diplomats at the United Nations said Ban had faced a dilemma in responding to the invitation from Myanmar's rulers.
Refusing to visit would be seen as not fulfilling his role as UN secretary general, but to accept and return empty-handed would be seen as a slap in the face, said a diplomat on condition of anonymity.
Other diplomats said Ban faced conflicting pressures.
Veto-wielding China, a traditional ally of Myanmar, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, were pushing Ban to go without setting conditions, they said.
But Western nations were pressing him to secure at least some concessions from the military regime.
Ban's last Myanmar trip was in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in May last year, when he visited devastated regions and pressured the junta into allowing foreign aid workers into the hardest-hit areas.
He was the first UN chief in 44 years to visit Myanmar but was effectively barred from bringing up issues of political reform.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Reasons why Thailand can't push Burma too far
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/06/11/politics/politics_30104843.php
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee
The Nation
Published on June 11, 2009
There are at least four reasons why Thailand is not able to push Burma's political development toward democracy and national reconciliation, as well as to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
First, the current government led by the Democrat Party has no record of civilian supremacy, not to mention democracy and reconciliation. The Thai government is not comfortable commenting on any military run government since it obtained help from military top brass to form its own coalition. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva knows very well how much he owes the commanders.
People in this country love to call on the military to intervene whenever they have problems with civilian government. The latest military coup d'etat happened only three years ago.
The Thai military junta dissolved at the end of 2007. Nobody in this country could say the military has no influence in politics, notably over this current government.
So-called national reconciliation is a political term this government might not be able to spell out. As long as it cannot reconcile the red- and yellow-shirted movements, it's better to have no comment about the even worse national division in Burma.
Disunity in that country is deeper than in Thailand, absolutely. It is not just a matter of political difference, but also a problem of race.
Second, Thai elites - notably those in power - have no clear vision about future opposition and dissident groups. They have no more faith in the opposition's fighting against the Burmese junta.
It seems the Thai elite jump to the conclusion the opposition, and even the rebellious ethnic minorities Thailand uses as a buffer, have a very slim chance of defeating the Tatmadaw [Burmese military].
Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya has talked to ethnic minorities along the Thai border several times over past months since he took the position, to convince them to turn themselves into the junta's fold.
The move is most helpful for the junta but weakens the dissidents.
Very few Thais connect strongly with Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. Some female members of the ruling Democrat Party and SEA Write-award winning author Jiranan Pitpreecha met Suu Kyi more than a decade ago.
Thammasat University conferred an honorary doctorate degree on her when she turned 60, but such a link is very slim. No strong pressure group could force the Thai government to help her.
Third, the Thai economy relies too much on resources from Burma. The government, every government, would never dare challenge the junta. Making Burma angry might cause trouble in business.
Thailand could not join any economic sanctions to pressure the junta since they would pose a direct challenge to its own economy. The jewellery industry, for example, suffered from the US's Tom Lantos Block Burmese Jade Act of 2008, since it stifled imports from any country of gems and jewellery containing Burmese raw material.
Rubies and other Burmese gemstones account for about 20 per cent of raw materials for the Thai jewellery industry.
Exports of gems and jewellery to the US dropped sharply in the last quarter of 2008 when the Act was enforced in October. Exports to the US contracted 35.19 per cent between October and December last year, according to Ministry of Commerce data.
Besides gemstones, Thailand is buying via pipeline more than a billion cubic feet of gas a day from Burma's Yadana and Yedagun gas fields, accounting for some 20 per cent of total consumption in this country.
Fourth, Thailand has the burden of proximity as it shares more than 2,200 kilometres of border with Burma.
The borders shelter problems ranging from smuggling and trafficking to political conflict. The junta knows how to use border issues to mount pressure on Bangkok.
Burma's military offensive against the Karen National Union over past weeks caused at least 3,000 people to flee to Thailand, home already to 111,000 displaced persons from Burma.
The operation coincided with the Thai Asean Chairman's statement on Aung San Suu Kyi.
As long as this country fails to overcome these obstacles, it will find it very difficult in lending a hand to save Aung San Suu Kyi.
Burma gas sales surge but little cash leaks out
By Amy Kazmin in Rangoon
Published: May 11 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 11 2009 03:00
Strong exports of natural gas have swollen Burma's foreign exchange reserves
to a record high but have not been used by the military regime to boost
health or education spending for the impoverished population, the
International Monetary Fund says in a report.
In its annual evaluation of Burma's economy, the IMF says the global
economic slowdown and the devastating May 2008 cyclone, which killed 140,000
people, have taken their toll. Gross domestic product growth slowed to about
4.5 per cent last year, from 5.5 per cent a year earlier.
Spending on extravagant showcase projects - such as the new political
capital, Naypitaw - is being financed by printing money, fuelling inflation
of about 30 per cent. Social spending, meanwhile, remains the lowest in
Asia, according to the IMF.
The report, which has not been publicly released but was obtained by the
Financial Times, says Burma's prospects "look bleak" if it fails to sweep
away socialist legacies - including the multiple exchange rate system and
stifling economic controls - or improve the deteriorating business climate.
How Burma's rulers use the revenue from natural gas exports to Thailand,
through pipelines operated by Total and Petronas, is also under scrutiny.
Gas revenues are added to the budget at the 30-year-old official exchange
rate of Kt6 to the dollar. The black market rate is about Kt1,000.
As a result the gas money has had "a small fiscal impact", accounting for
less than 1 per cent of budget revenue in 2007-08, instead of 57 per cent if
valued at market rates. The IMF has urged the regime to report gas sector
revenues at the market exchange rate to stabilise state finances.
The downbeat assessment comes as independent agricultural experts warn of
rising distress among Burmese farmers after a steep fall in prices at
harvest.
Analysts fear there will be a significant drop in rice planting in the
monsoon season, which begins soon, as heavily indebted farmers try to reduce
costs.
"The rural economy here is on the verge of some type of collapse," said one
Rangoon-based expert. "Rice farming is not profitable."
Analysing Burma's economic performance is challenging because of the paucity
of accurate and timely data. Many western policymakers still see Burma as
largely cut off from the global economy, especially after the US and EU
tightened sanctions following a harsh military crackdown on mass protests in
September 2007.
The IMF says the impact of western sanctions has been "moderated by strong
regional trade links", although the region's woes are hitting Burma's
natural gas, other commodity exports and remittance flows from millions of
Burmese working abroad.
"A lot of people thought that, since they have no banking system, they would
escape the impact of the crisis," said one diplomat. "But it's such a simple
economy, so dependent on commodity prices."
Burmese authorities have acknowledged the slowdown, though they still see
growth as a robust 10 per cent. Exchange reserves stand at $3.6bn (€2.7bn,
£2.4bn).
The IMF says growth will be about 4 per cent - "insufficient to reduce
poverty" without major reforms.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/795043a4-3dc2-11de-a85e-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
==============================
HIV/AIDS | New York Times Examines HIV/AIDS Treatment Access in Myanmar
[April 1, 2009]
The New York Times on Wednesday examined antiretroviral treatment access in
Myanmar, which ranks among the lowest countries worldwide in international
assistance per capita. Medecins Sans Frontieres runs 23 clinics in the
country, and the clinics serve as the primary source of antiretrovirals for
HIV-positive people in Myanmar, according to the Times. According to MSF,
240,000 people are living with HIV in Myanmar, and 76,000 are in urgent need
of antiretroviral access. In addition, about 25,000 HIV-positive people die
annually in the country.
MSF clinics have provided 11,000 HIV-positive people with drug access, but
the group has said that it cannot increase its budget in Myanmar without
taking funding away from projects elsewhere. MSF last year announced that it
had stopped accepting new patients to continue providing treatment to
current clients. This year, the group has accepted about 3,000 new patients.
"When we stopped last July, it was devastating for the staff," Joe
Belliveau, MSF operations manager, said, adding, "They couldn't even treat
the ones dying on their doorsteps."
The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria this year has
applied for government permits to bring antiretrovirals into Myanmar, and
the Times reports that the number of HIV-positive people with treatment
access likely will increase. Currently, fewer than 20% of HIV-positive
people in need of drugs receive them -- either from international groups or
in small amounts from the government -- according to an MSF report released
in November 2008 (Mydans, New York Times, 4/1).
Online A New York Times photography slideshow is available online.
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org/article.asp?DR_ID=57803
==============================
Tuberculosis | Myanmar To Take Nationwide Census on TB Patients, Health
Ministry Says
[April 7, 2009]
Myanmar plans to take a nationwide census on the number of people with
tuberculosis beginning this month, officials from the Ministry of Health
said Sunday, Xinhuanet reports. According to Xinhuanet, Myanmar is one of
the 22 countries with the highest TB burdens worldwide.
According to the health ministry, about 130,000 TB patients were treated
successfully in 2008. The country reported an 87% TB case detection rate and
an 85% treatment success rate in 2008, the ministry said. The country spent
about $440,000 in fiscal year 2007-2008 to treat TB patients. According to
Xinhuanet, Myanmar is increasing efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria
to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. There are about
100,000 new TB cases annually in the country, Xinhuanet reports (Xinhuanet,
4/5).
http://www.globalhealthreporting.org/article.asp?DR_ID=57895
=============================
Nargis highlights extreme needs in rest of Myanmar
01 May 2009 18:06:00 GMT
Written by: A Myanmar writer
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or
for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
When Cyclone Nargis slammed into Myanmar last year it triggered a
humanitarian effort on a scale never before seen in the impoverished nation.
Attention from the media, donors and relief agencies prompted the brutal
regime to open its doors to foreign aid in the disaster zone.
In stark contrast, aid workers say the rest of Myanmar continues its
downward spiral with chronic food insecurity and health crises going largely
unchecked, resulting in tens of thousands of preventable deaths every year.
Figures from the United Nations show 10 percent of the population fall below
the poverty line, meaning 70 percent of their income is spent on food.
"That's 5 million people who are extremely vulnerable in terms of food
security and that's a lot in a country that's food surplus," said Chris
Kaye, country director of the United Nations' World Food Programme.
WFP says it's working to prevent a hunger crisis in northern Rakhine State,
where successive poor harvests, rising food prices as well as political
issues concerning the statelessness of the Muslim Rohingya minority have
contributed to a dire situation.
Other critical areas where WFP is providing food include Chin - the poorest
state in the country - where rat infestations have destroyed large parts of
last year's harvest, and former poppy farming areas in Shan state, where
villagers are facing a challenging transition from lucrative, easy to grow
poppy crops to subsistence farming.
HEALTH
In 2007, the government spent only $0.70 per person on healthcare, according
to medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Myanmar has one of the highest rates of tuberculosis (TB) in the world with
tens of thousands falling victim to the illness each year. In addition, a
multi-drug resistant strain of TB is also spreading, for which there is
currently no treatment in Myanmar.
Malaria remains the number one killer, and although the treatment is
available, it costs between $3 and $4 - still expensive in a country where
many people earn less than $2 a day.
Worse, a new strain of malaria that is resistant to artemisinin - the latest
and most effective drug to treat the disease - has been found in western
Cambodia, and there are fears that migrant Myanmar workers in the
Thai-Cambodia border area may bring it into the country.
HIV/AIDS also kills thousands a year due to lack of affordable drugs, aid
workers say. Myanmar has about 240,000 people living with HIV. And only a
fifth of the 75,000 or so needing anti-retroviral treatment (ART) receive
it.
But Frank Smithuis, MSF Holland's head of mission, says it's unfair to blame
the Myanmar government for the lack of ART.
"Of course it would be good if the Myanmar government spent more on ART," he
added. "But if you look at other countries in the area, take Laos and
Cambodia, national governments do not pay for ART, it's donors that actually
pay."
Andrew Kirkwood, country director for Save The Children UK in Myanmar,
agrees.
"One third of all children under five are malnourished, and about 100,000
kids under five die every year mostly of malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia,
three diseases that we know how to treat exactly for pennies," he said.
"It's obscene that the international community isn't trying to do more about
that."
TO FUND OR NOT TO FUND?
Aid to Myanmar is a controversial issue and like everything else about the
country, politicised.
Donors have a range of concerns, from whether their aid actually reaches
those who need it most to the junta's well-documented human rights abuses,
not to mention the debate over whether areas such as healthcare and food
security are the government's responsibility.
Overseas development aid in Myanmar has always been low. According to U.N.
figures from 2005, Myanmar received less than $3 per person in aid while
other developing countries in the region such as Laos and Cambodia received
over $50 and $37 respectively.
But Save The Children UK, which has 1,500 staff in the country, says the
last year's cyclone relief efforts should show it is possible to provide
effective humanitarian aid.
"Hopefully, if there's a silver lining in the Nargis experience, it has
demonstrated to the international community just what can be done inside the
country with assistance," Kirkwood said.
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/58220/2009/04/1-180659-1.htm
==========================
Goh’s Comments Significant
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15920
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By WAI MOE Wednesday, June 10, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe that Suu Kyi’s trial had “an international dimension to the matter, which Myanmar [Burma] should not ignore.”
According to Channel News Asia, Goh’s comments came during a meeting with Than Shwe in Naypyidaw on Tuesday, adding to the diplomatic pressure on the Burmese junta over pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial.
Goh Chok Tong had a frank discussion with Snr-Gen Than Shwe at their meeting in the capital Naypyidaw. (Source: Straits Times)
Win Tin, one of the leaders of Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), said he welcomed the Senior Minister of Singapore’s comments on Burma’s political crisis.
“I want to say that Mr Goh Chok Tong’s trip is a good diplomatic approach. I appreciate his trip and his comments on Burmese politics,” he told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.
He said Goh’s trip is significant because Singapore is the country that has attempted to drag the isolated Burmese regime into the international community through its “constructive engagement policy.”
Singapore is also one of biggest investors in Burma and supported Burma’s membership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in 1997.
Win Tin said he hopes Goh noted the wrongdoings of the junta in Burma and suggested ways to alleviate the suffering in the country.
Commenting on the potential for an all-inclusive process in Burmese politics, Win Tin said he believes that the term “all-inclusive” should mean not only in respect of elections, but also an all-inclusive process in all political issues in Burma.
He also said that elections are important in the democratization process, but that the regime must review the constitution alongside opposition parties.
According to Channel News Asia, the Burmese leadership responded to Goh’s comments by noting that “the opposition [in Burma] needs to recognize that the military plays a pivotal role in the reconciliation process.”
Win Tin told The Irrawaddy that the junta’s comments were untrue, as the NLD has always stated that it recognizes the military’s role.
Goh, one of Asia’s most prominent statesmen and currently Senior Member of the Singaporean government, is in Burma at the invite of Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein who visited the city-state in March 2009.
However, Burma analysts said Goh would use Singapore’s strong position in Asean to push concerns about the political situation in Burma.
Larry Jagan, a British journalist in Bangkok who specializes in Burmese issues, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that although Goh visited Burma as the Singaporean Senior Minister, he could informally act as an envoy on behalf of Asean to tell Than Shwe face-to-face what Asean members think about the criminal trial of Suu Kyi and the Burmese political situation.
“Goh Chok Tong is a senior politician within Asean. He is someone that Than Shwe has high regard for. So, he has the kind of stature that is needed as someone who can go to talk with Than Shwe frankly,” Jagan said.
“What he told Than Shwe is more his personal view than Asean’s view,” he added. “But his concerns [about the trial and the political crisis in Burma] are shared by most Asean leaders.”
Singapore is one of the Burmese regime’s most important diplomatic relatives and trading partners. Burma experts suspect millions of dollars of the generals’ and their cronies’ money are in Singaporean banks.
The Burmese junta, who is under sanctions from the United States and the European Union, has attempted to trade with the world through Singapore, experts say.
The former British island colony also serves as a hospice and retreat for Burma’s ruling generals, including Than Shwe, the late Gen Soe Win and the late Lt-Gen Maung Bo.
Military affairs also play a role in the two countries’ relationship. Burmese military experts have claimed that the Burmese junta has bought warfare material from the Singaporean government in the past.
Analysts have said Goh’s trip is quite significant as a diplomatic approach, because he was able to meet with Than Shwe who earlier this year rebuffed Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy to Burma.
Debbie Stothard of Alternative Asean Network on Burma said Asean leaders are now showing their concerns over the ongoing political process in the country.
“But just one trip is nothing as far as diplomatic efforts for change in Burma are concerned,” she said, adding, “Asean should push continuously. Burma issues are now a problem for Asean.”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
Thursday, June 11, 2009
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
http://thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/north-korea-helps-burmas-junta-dig-in-against-perceived-threats/311318
June 10, 2009
Bertil Lintner
North Korea Helps Burma’s Junta Dig In Against Perceived Threats
Missiles and missile and nuclear technology, counterfeiting money and cigarette smuggling, front companies and restaurants in foreign countries, labor exports to the Middle East — North Korea has been very innovative when it comes to raising badly needed foreign exchange for the regime in Pyongyang. But there is a less known trade in services that the North Koreans have offered to their foreign clients: expertise in tunneling.
Photos obtained by this correspondent between 2003 and 2006 show that while the rest of the world is speculating about the outcome of long-awaited elections in Burma, the ruling military junta has been busy digging in for the long haul — literally. North Korean technicians have helped them construct underground facilities where they can survive any threats from their own people as well as the outside world. It is not known if the tunnels are linked to Burma’s reported efforts to develop nuclear technology — in which the North Koreans allegedly are active as well.
The photographs show that an extensive network of underground installations was built near Burma’s new, fortified capital Naypyidaw. In November 2005, the military moved its administration from the old capital Rangoon to an entirely new site that was carved out of the wilderness 460 kilometers north of Rangoon.
Meaning the “Abode of Kings,” Naypyidaw is meant to symbolize the power of the military and its desire to build a new state based on the tradition of Burma’s precolonial warrior kings. But underground facilities were apparently deemed necessary to secure the military’s grip on power. Additional tunnels and underground meeting halls have been built near Taunggyi, the capital of Burma’s northeastern Shan state and the home of several of the country’s decades-long insurgencies. Some of the pictures, taken in June 2006, show a group of technicians in civilian dress walking out of a government guesthouse in the Naypyidaw area. Asian diplomats have identified those technicians, with features distinct from the Burmese workers around them, as North Koreans.
This is quite a turnaround as Burma severed relations with Pyongyang in 1983 after North Korean agents planted a bomb at Rangoon’s Martyrs Mausoleum, killing 18 visiting South Korean officials, including the deputy prime minister and three other government ministers.
Secret talks between Burmese and North Korean diplomats began in Bangkok in the early 1990s.The two sides had discovered that despite the hostile act in the previous decade they had a lot in common. Both had come under unprecedented international condemnation, especially by the United States, because of their blatant disregard for the most basic human rights and Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons program. Burma also needed more military hardware to suppress an increasingly rebellious urban population as well as ethnic rebels in the frontier areas. North Korea needed food, rubber and other essentials — and was willing to accept barter deals, which suited the cash-strapped Burmese generals. “They have both drawn their wagons in a circle ready to defend themselves,” a Bangkok-based Western diplomat said. “Burma’s generals admire the North Koreans for standing up to the United States and wish they could do the same.”
After an exchange of secret visits, North Korean armaments began to arrive in Burma. Reports of this were met with skepticism, especially because of the 1983 Rangoon bombings. But when North Korean-made field artillery pieces were seen in Burma in the early 2000s, it became clear that North Korea had found a new ally — several years before diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in April 2007.
“While based on a 1950s Russian design, these weapons [the field guns] were battle-tested and reliable,” Australian Burma scholar Andrew Selth stated in a 2004 working paper for the Australian National University. “They significantly increased Burma’s long-range artillery capabilities, which were then very weak.” Since then, Burma has also taken delivery of North Korean truck-mounted, multiple rocket launchers and possibly also surface-to-air missiles for its Chinese-supplied naval vessels.
Then came the tunneling experts. Most of Pyongyang’s own defense industries, including its chemical and biological-weapons programs, and many other military as well as government installations are underground. This includes known factories at Ganggye and Sakchu, where thousands of technicians and workers labor in a maze of tunnels dug under mountains.
The export of such know-how to Burma was first documented in June 2006, when intelligence agencies intercepted a message from Naypyidaw confirming the arrival of a group of North Korean tunneling experts at the site. Today, three years later, the dates on the photos published today confirm the accuracy of this report.
By now, the tunnels and underground installations should be completed, as would those near Taunggyi. This well-hidden complex ensures there is no danger of irate civilians storming government buildings, as they did during the massive pro-democracy uprising in August-September 1988. Sources say that the internationally isolated military junta may also consider these deep bunkers as their last repair in case of airstrikes of the kind that the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq endured.
It is not clear how much, or what, Burma has paid for the assistance provided by the North Korean experts, but it could be food — or gold, which is found in riverbeds in northern Burma. Or some other mineral. Burma, of course, is not the only foreign tunneling venture by North Korea.
In southern Lebanon following the 2006 war, Israel’s Defense Forces and the United Nations found several of the underground complexes, which by then had been abandoned by Hezbollah militants. By coincidence or not, these tunnels and underground rooms — some big enough for meetings to be held there — are strikingly similar to those the South Koreans have unearthed under the Demilitarized Zone that separates South from North Korea.
Under small, manhole cover-sized entrances hidden under grass and bushes were steel-lined shafts with ladders leading down to big rooms with electricity, ventilation, bathrooms with showers and drainage systems. Some of the tunnels are 40 meters deep and located only 100 meters from the Israeli border. North Korea’s possible involvement in digging these tunnels is, however, difficult to ascertain.
Beirut sources suggest that it is likely that Hezbollah has used North Korean designs and blueprints given to them by their Syrian or Iranian allies — both of whom are close to the North Koreans. Either way, North Korean expertise in tunneling has become a valuable commodity for export. And Pyongyang is flexible about the method of payment as long as it helps the international pariah regime.
Bertil Lintner is a Swedish journalist based in Thailand and the author of “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim Clan.”
YaleGlobal
Myanmar: Suu Kyi says trial 'political'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090611/wl_asia_afp/myanmarpoliticssuukyi_20090611081723;_ylc=X3oDMTB0ZzI2ODJyBF9TAzIxNTExMDUEZW1haWxJZAMxMjQ0NzA5MTk1
Thu Jun 11, 4:17 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi believes the junta's charges against her are "politically motivated", her lawyer has said, as he lodged an appeal over a witness ban at her trial.
The opposition leader met with her legal team in prison on Wednesday to discuss her defence against charges that she broke the rules of her house arrest when an American man swam to her lakeside property in May.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said yesterday when we met that the trial is politically motivated," Nyan Win, one of her three lawyers and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), told AFP.
The 63-year-old Nobel laureate faces five years in jail if convicted, which would keep her locked up far beyond national polls scheduled to be held next year.
Critics have dismissed the planned elections as a sham designed to entrench the military's hold on power as Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing.
Her legal team submitted a high court application on Thursday seeking an appeal to allow two banned defence witnesses to be heard at her trial.
"The high court will hold a hearing for admission on the coming 17th (June)," Nyan Win said, adding that if the court decided to admit the complaint, it would then schedule a further date for a formal appeal hearing.
A lower court on Tuesday overturned a ban on her having a second defence witness to testify -- one legal expert has already given evidence -- but a ban on two other witnesses was upheld.
The two barred witnesses are Win Tin, a dissident journalist who was Myanmar's longest serving prisoner until his release in September, and Tin Oo, the detained deputy leader of the NLD.
Aung San Suu Kyi is dissatisfied that her lakeside home is still guarded by authorities despite her house arrest's having officially ended in May, Nyan Win said.
The democracy leader is currently held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison and said friends had been denied access to her residence, despite the fact that police told her in May that her house arrest was over.
"She is not very satisfied," said Nyan Win.
"She said that her house arrest ended on May 26, but her friends are not allowed to go into her house for cleaning. Security staff said they are still waiting for permission from their superiors," he told AFP.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since Myanmar's military junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last elections, in 1990.
She has spent most of that time in virtual isolation at her house, where the regime has allowed her to receive visits from only a handful of people, including her doctors and lawyers.
The trial, which has drawn a storm of international protest, is due to resume for a procedural hearing on Friday.
Data shows Japan's economy shrank less than thought in Q1
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/435264/1/.html
Posted: 11 June 2009 1625 hrs
TOKYO: Japan's economy shrank less than initially thought in the first quarter, data has shown, as hopes grew of a recovery from its worst recession since World War II.
The world's second biggest economy contracted 14.2 per cent in the first three months of 2009, according to revised government figures, an improvement on the 15.2 per cent shrinkage reported last month.
Improved sentiment for a rebound in the economy was reflected in the stock market, where shares broke the 10,000 point barrier for the first time in eight months.
"Optimism about a recovery is increasing," said Ryuta Otsuka, strategist at Toyo Securities. "Risk money which had fled to bond markets is beginning to return to stocks and commodity markets."
The new data also said the Asian powerhouse shrank by 3.8 per cent in the January-March period against the previous quarter, less than the initial estimate of a 4.0 per cent fall.
However, the annualised 14.2 per cent drop was still Japan's worst on record.
Tokyo voiced optimism at the performance in the Nikkei, which touched 10,022.23 in the morning, breaking the psychologically important 10,000 mark for the first time since October 8.
"The cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso has implemented a number of economic stimulus packages, which are kicking in throughout the nation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference.
Japan, Asia's number one economy, entered recession in the second quarter of 2008 as demand slowed sharply for its autos and big-ticket export items, and the downturn has since become Japan's worst since World War II.
Recent economic data, including gains in industrial output, have brought rays of hope of a budding recovery.
But they have been tempered by rising unemployment and a drop in wholesale prices that threatens deflation. Wholesale prices fell 5.4 per cent year on year last month, their sharpest drop in 22 years.
Shinko Research Institute economist Norio Miyagawa shrugged off the revised economic data and said: "Japan remains in a weak growth trend."
He also said consumption would likely stay lacklustre while still piled-up inventories could weigh on industrial production.
On a more hopeful note, he said that "on-quarter figures in the April-June period may turn to positive as strong demand from China and other countries could help push up" Japanese exports.
Daisuke Uno, chief market strategist of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., was sceptical about the stock market's recent optimistic sentiment.
"The real economy is not improving, with capital only flowing into speculative markets," he said. "Demand needs to improve first... Optimism and pessimism will likely come in turns for a while."
- AFP/so
Obama nominee indicates possible change on Myanmar
http://www.reflector.com/news/nation/obama-nominee-indicates-possible-change-on-myanmar-655486.html
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's choice as top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said Wednesday the United States is interested in easing its long-standing policy of isolation against military-run Myanmar.
Kurt Campbell, however, told U.S. lawmakers at his Senate confirmation hearing that Myanmar's heavy-handed treatment of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi hinders any U.S. effort to change course and engage the ruling junta in Myanmar, also called Burma.
"As a general practice, we're prepared to reach out, not just in Burma but in other situations as well," Campbell said.
But, he said, the junta's trial this week of Suu Kyi on charges that could put her in prison for five years is "deeply, deeply concerning, and it makes it very difficult to move forward."
Expectations are that the 63-year-old Nobel laureate will be found guilty by a court known for handing out harsh sentences for political dissidents.
The outcome of Suu Kyi's trial, Campbell said, will be a major consideration as the Obama administration reviews U.S. policy on Myanmar.
The United States has traditionally relied heavily on tough sanctions meant to force the generals to respect human rights and release thousands of imprisoned political activists. Those sanctions are widely supported among both senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Campbell emphasized that greater engagement with Myanmar would not mean the removal of sanctions.
But his comments indicate that the State Department is considering seriously a change in policy.
While Campbell has not yet been confirmed as assistant secretary of state for East Asia, he is close to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he said views Myanmar as a priority. Campbell said he has had intense talks with Clinton about how best to bring change to Myanmar, which has been ruled by military juntas since 1962.
Clinton, on a trip through Asia in February, addressed the administration's dilemma with Myanmar. Neither tough U.S. sanctions nor engagement by neighbors, she said, have persuaded the junta to embrace democracy or release Suu Kyi. Clinton said the U.S. planned to work closely with the region on ideas on "how best to bring about positive change in Burma."
Campbell told lawmakers that previous U.S. policy on Myanmar clearly had "not borne fruit."
"In the past, there has been a determination that, 'Not much can be done; let's live with our sanctions,'" Campbell said. "I think there's a very high-level degree of interest in seeing what's possible going forward, and a deep sense of disappointment in the recent steps that the junta has taken toward Aung San Suu Kyi."
Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said regional talks similar to the six-nation North Korean nuclear disarmament negotiations could be used with Myanmar.
If the generals were to make substantial changes, Woodrum said, then pressure could be lifted. But he said sanctions have been important tools in confronting the junta.
Campbell's comments came in response to repeated questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Asia subcommittee's Democratic chairman, Sen. Jim Webb, who suggested that "affirmative engagement" would bring the most change toMyanmar.
It has been 19 years since Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory at the ballot box but was prevented from taking office. She has been detained without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years, including the last six.
Suu Kyi is charged with violating terms of her house arrest because an uninvited American man swam secretly to her closely guarded lakeside home last month and stayed two days.
The trial has drawn outrage internationally and from Suu Kyi's Myanmar supporters, who say the junta is using the bizarre case of the American swimmer as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi detained through next year's scheduled elections.
___
June 10, 2009 - 6:19 p.m. EDT
Copyright 2009, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thai army reinforces Burma border
http://www.abitsu.org/?p=4976
June 11, 2009
By Jonathan Head, BBC News: Thailand has sent heavily-armed troops to reinforce positions along the Burma border after an influx of ethnic Karen refugees fleeing an army offensive.
More than 4,000 people have fled Burma for Thailand in the largest influx of refugees in the area for a decade.
Karen rebels have been fighting for an independent state for 60 years, in the world’s longest-running civil war.
Over the last three years the Burmese military has driven the rebels back to a few small bases along the border.
The long war along Burma’s forested eastern border has caused immense human suffering, with an estimated 500,000 ethnic Karen forced from their homes.
Most of those who fled into Thailand over the past week had already been displaced, and were living at a camp inside Burma when it was repeatedly shelled by Burmese army mortars.
Squalid camps
Fighters from the Karen National Union (KNU) say they are holding their ground - but they are heavily outnumbered by the joint forces of the Burmese army and a Karen splinter group which is allied to the government.
The KNU has steadily retreated over the decades, from its position of greatest strength right after Burma’s independence in 1948 when it came close to capturing Rangoon, to its situation today, with just a few bases along the border.
Its strength has been sapped recently by a string of defections, and by the assassination of its most charismatic leader in Thailand last year.
The Thai government has tried to start a dialogue between the two sides this year, so far with little success.
The 4,000 new arrivals will join around 100,000 other Karen who have sought shelter in Thailand.
Most are confined to squalid camps, which the Thai authorities do not allow them to leave. Some have lived in these camps for more than a decade.
Topics: Daily News |
【再送】第57回PFB例会のご案内『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景（仮題）』スピーカー：根本敬・秋元由紀
みなさま、
開催日が近くなりましたので、再度、ご案内させていただきます。
ぜひお越しください。
ビルマ市民フォーラム
事務局 宮澤
【転送・転載歓迎】
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第57回 ビルマ市民フォーラム例会のご案内
<6月13日（土） 18時～/ 東京・池袋>
￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
『アウンサンスーチー不当起訴のゆくえと背景 （仮題）』
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◆資料代＝ 200円（会員）・500円（非会員）
◆定 員＝ 80名 （事前申込み不要／先着順）
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先月5月14日、ビルマ軍政は湖を泳ぎ渡り突然スーチーさん宅を訪れた
米国人男性をスーチーさんが自宅に入れたことが自宅軟禁の規則に反するとして
国家防御法を適用し、スーチーさんを起訴しました。
国民民主連盟（ＮＬＤ）を率い、母国の自由と民主化を求めて闘いつづける
アウンサンスーチーさん。
1991年にはノーベル平和賞も受賞しています。しかしながら、この間軍政は
過去19年間のうち13年以上もの間、スーチーさんを自宅軟禁下においてきました。
2003年5月から今日までつづく三度目の自宅軟禁の期限は今年5月末で
きれることになっており、今回の事件はビルマの人々はもちろんのこと、
国際社会が同氏の解放を待ち望んでいた矢先の出来事でした。
今、世界中がスーチーさんの裁判のゆくえに注目しています。
今、ビルマはどうなっているのだろうか？
アウンサンスーチーさんとは、どんな人物なのだろうか？
国際社会は何をすべきか？
次回例会では、お2人のビルマ専門家から、この事件の経緯と
日本政府を含む国際社会の動きなど最新のビルマ情勢をお話
いただきます。
また、アウンサンスーチーさんの思想・行動・おかれている状況に
ついても改めて振り返りたいと思います。
初めての方も、ぜひご参加ください。
---------------------------------------------
【プログラム】
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17:45～開場
18:00～19:00（60分）
「事件の経緯と国際社会の反応について（仮題）」
・・・・秋元 由紀（ビルマ情報ネットワーク ディレクター、米国弁護士）
19:00～19:10（10分）
休憩
19:10～20:10（60分）
「アウンサンスーチー その思想と行動を振り返る（仮題）」
・・・・根本 敬（上智大学教授、ビルマ市民フォーラム運営委員）
20:10～20:20
PFB事務局からのお知らせ他
＊在日ビルマ人のみなさんも参加されますので、ビルマ語逐次通訳が
入ります。ご了承ください。
---------------------------------------------
【スピーカー プロフィール】
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●秋元 由紀 （あきもと ゆき）
ビルマ情報ネットワークのディレクターとしてビルマ民主化問題に関する情報提供、
調査、提言を行う。2008年夏には参議院ODA調査派遣団のビルマ難民キャンプ視察な
どに同行した。特定非営利活動法人メコン・ウォッチでもビルマへの開発援助につい
て調査や政策提言を継続中。著書にPost-Nargis Analysis: The Other Side of the
Story (Burma Medical Association et al., 2008)、Opportunities and Pitfalls:
Preparing for Burma’s Economic Transitions (Open Society Institute, 2006)、
「ビルマ（ミャンマー）の開発と人権・環境問題」（季刊「公共研究」第2巻第1号、
2005年）。米国弁護士。
ビルマ情報ネットワーク http://www.burmainfo.org/
きょうのビルマのニュース http://d.hatena.ne.jp/burmainfo/
●根本 敬 （ねもと けい）
1957年生まれ。上智大学外国語学部教授。専門はビルマ近現
代史研究。著書に『アウンサン：封印された独立ビルマの夢』（1996年、岩波書
店）、『ビルマ軍事政権とアウンサンスーチー』（田辺寿夫と共著、2003年、角川新
書）、「（第6章）アウンサンスーチー：真理の追究」（共著『現代世界の女性リー
ダーたち』所収、2008年、ミネルヴァ書房）ほか、論文多数。ＮＨＫはじめテレビ・
ラジオのニュース解説（ビルマ関係）も随時担当。
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おります。会員・非会員を問わず、どなたでもご参加いただけます。
初めての方でもぜひお気軽にご参加ください。
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Karen Pushed Over Thai Border by Burmese Troops
Nearly 4,000 ethnic Karen are said to have abandoned a camp and villages in eastern Burma to seek refuge in Thailand following attacks on Karen guerrillas by government troops.
Burmese troops were shelling and attempting to advance on five encampments of Karen insurgents as villagers continued to flee in one of the largest movements of refugees across the border in a decade, Karen spokesman David Thaw said.
Thai troops have been deployed along the frontier to keep fighting from spilling over.
June 09, 2009
The ethnic group’s Karen National Union has been fighting for more than 60 years for greater autonomy from Burma’s junta, but its strength has dwindled over the past decade due to army offensives and divisions within its ranks.
Human rights groups and the United Nations have accused Burma’s government of torture, killings and rape of Karen civilians in their attempts to stamp out the insurgency. But this appears to have had no effect and the military regime has denied the charges.
“Once again, the international community is looking the other way while my people are attacked and forced to run for their lives,” Zoya Phan, a Karen with the Burma Campaign UK, said in a statement. “Why hasn’t a single government called for an end to these attacks?”
Some 100,000 mostly ethnic Karen refugees already shelter in camps in Thailand after fleeing counterinsurgency operations, while aid agencies say nearly half a million others are internally displaced inside eastern Burma.
Thaw said a camp in Burma that sheltered internal refugees had been abandoned, and that the government and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army were trying to overrun five Karen positions nearby.
The Democratic Karen Buddhist Army split from the predominantly Christian Karen National Union in 1995.
About 25 opposing troops have been killed or wounded since the fighting began over the weekend, the spokesman said. He said he had no information about Karen casualties.
Thailand doesn’t allow the refugees to enter established camps in the country, so they are relying on Buddhist monasteries near the border, Thaw said. AP
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